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Galle, 
Sri Lanka
346,263 people lived in Galle in 2025. It is the 1651st largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 3rd largest in Sri Lanka.
This is the UN's built-up area, drawn from satellite pictures and census maps rather than from the city limits, and the two can be a long way apart. The rule behind it.
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries
People · every five years · 1975 to 2050
How Galle grew
Where Galle had 10 people in 1975, it had 36.5 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 404,907 people in 2050. It passed 250,000 people between 2010 and 2015.
projected (after 2025) · how sure the UN is: high moderate low
How to read this: read it left to right, 1975 to 2050, one column every five years, the height being people. Hatching marks the projected years. Below, a strip of the UN's confidence: strong colour where the census maps are recent and detailed, pale where they are not, blank where the place was not counted as a city.
People · your family's years · 1975 to 2050
Galle through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Galle in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Sri Lanka · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 24 cities in Sri Lanka in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there, the biggest being Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte - Colombo. The ringed dot in colour is Galle; the grey dots are the rest. The outlines around them are neighbouring countries.
Area and built-up land · km²
How much land it covers
In 2025, Galle covered 148 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 16 km² of it. That is 45 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 7 by 7 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 10.5 times its size, and its people are 3.6 times as many.
How to read this: each pale square is the city's whole area, the strong square inside it the part that is built on; one scale for all three, so a bigger square is more land. Hatched is the UN's projection.
Of every 100 people in Sri Lanka
Its share of Sri Lanka
Of every 100 people in Sri Lanka in 2025, 1 lived in Galle, which is 346,263 people.
How to read this: shrink Sri Lanka to 100 people and this is what you get. The coloured squares are the ones who would live in Galle; the grey ones are everybody else, in other cities, in towns and out in the country.
Ranked by people · 2025
Cities of a similar size
In the world, 2025
- 1647 Southampton United Kingdom347,446
- 1648 Mainpuri India347,106
- 1649 Khammam India346,533
- 1650 Burhanpur India346,277
- 1651 Galle346,263
- 1652 Francisco Morato Brazil346,105
- 1653 Ngandajika Democratic Republic of the Congo345,996
- 1654 Bo Sierra Leone345,988
- 1655 Safi Morocco345,865
In Sri Lanka, 2025
- 78 Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte - Colombo5,223,838
- 675 Kandy785,519
- 1651 Galle346,263
- 1987 Matara292,019
How to read this: the number before each name is its place among all 12,138 cities in the world in 2025; bars are people, on one scale per list. Only cities that reach 300,000 people have a page here, so a gap in the numbers is a smaller city.
Apparatus
Sources and method
The figures for Galle are the UN's own, at five-year steps: an estimate for each of 1975 to 2025, then projection to 2050. Projected years are drawn hatched, and the UN publishes no range of uncertainty for a city. What a city means here, how the UN measures one, and why that number can differ from the one Galle publishes about itself: how the figures here are put together.
Sources: UN WUP 2025 · Natural Earth · flag-icons. Every source, its licence and how to cite it →
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries